Believing in God is NOT Bullshit

Mankind believes in God because most of mankind cannot help themselves to not believe. The majority of Mankind appears to need simple answers when something is unexplainable (how we got here), or horribly indifferent.

God or religion is like comfort food for even those who are intelligent and inventive. Just look at 9-11 and the collapse of the Twin Towers.

For the past 10 years I have listened to "God Bless America" to honor the victims. Every time I hear "God Bless America" I see two large jet planes hitting the World Trade Center, I see trapped people, fire licking at their feet, hurtling out of windows, I hear their loud thuds as they hit the side walks, I wonder if they were singing "God Bless America" as they came down, I see the unbelievable image of two massive buildings collapsing into a pile of dust, rubble and molecules, trapping numerous firefighters and others-----Two 1,500 foot buildings that disappear!

"God Bless America'? You have got to be kidding! How about "God Bless the Holocaust" as a memorial to the 11,000,000 victims each May when Germany was defeated?

Given this--we will continue to sing "God Bless" anything, in order to try and get comfort that,(though there isn't), some sense to be made of this glorious thing called life---a grand experiment.

What Dragotron said... We fear unknowns so we ask wise ones for answers and they apportion answers. Why is the Earth shaking? Why is my village under water? Why is there no rain? What happens when we die?

Fear is a debilitator, any answer that allays fear will allow a person to grow. It does not matter if it is made up stuff or truth, as long as fear is allayed.

So whilst the concept of God may be bullshit, the old answers found in old books may be bullshit, beliving in God, finding succour from those old answers is not bullshit. We all want to know our place, we all want our lives to have meaning, we all want to belong to something, we all want peace of mind. Belonging is not bullshit.

That is a common misconception about religions. Religions and the belief systems they are based upon have less to do with stupid people fear, and more to do with the scheming members of communities creating power structures. Machiavellian personalities CREATE fear (just as our politicians do) in order to dominate us. Fear is the consequence of religionists, not the cause.

Fear is a consequence of not being well versed, genetic acquired brain chemistry, upbringing and most of all being threatened by someone that can hurt you. Mostly not being very smart allows for what you describe.

But there's no such thing as "not interfering" with people. When a religious person votes in a religious freak and numbskull for a politician position, that affects us atheists, they are interfering with my liberties and dreams. Anyone who pretends to not take part in society's decisions is in fact voting for the status quo, that also interferes with my liberties to be non religious.

Thanks for all your interesting and cool commentary. I am impressed with James' select group of friends and acquaintances. I have not had that experience. working in hospitals, colleges and being extremely gregarious, and very poor as a kid, I have friends of all persuasions. I have been exposed to wide variety of beliefs. God not being a genetic trait is hard for me to swallow. God is believed by an enormous number of people. To think that is it strictly a learned process of upbringing is just not plausible. I was brought up as a Methodist. I stopped believing when I was 13 years old simply because I thought about it. I cannot believe that one can believe in something that is unseen or unheard and indifferent, unless the mind conjures up images, sounds and justifications to ensure there is a superior being, life after death, or some meaning to this life on this tiny speck we call home.

God is not Bullshit to several Billion people--I prefer not to do the Richard Dawkins' belittlement of those who probably have no choice but to believe. Calling God Bullshit is OK if you think that way--(I do), but I do not tell a devout believer that "God is Bullshit" If I have an acquaintance who insists on trying to convert me, I just provide him or her with "who said God Said" and "where were you before you were born----it is where you will be after you die" It is the way I feel. But I respect the way he or she who believes feels.

And once again-- Communism is a Godless dogma that promotes a non-religious society which does not work because so many people prefer to believe. Being an Atheist is not something that makes one superior---being a decent human being deserves that distinction.

A break with religion, a true break, on a social scale, would probably take the same amount of time to be achieved, as does the pain of segregation and institutionalised discrimination that certain countries have perpetrated onto their minorities. Taking South Africa as an example... I lived there 6 months in 2003 and the pain of Apartheid was still very present. I have seen Caucasians in South Africa (and in Canada with regards to First Nation peoples) bitch that now that the hardship is gone, they should "just with it" and "move on". But this sort of "moving on" takes several generations, in order that the people who lived through it become parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents, etc... until the story becomes a legend, and is no longer present in their lives. Religion is hard to keep out because there's always someone around to cling to the old ways. In order to eradicate religions... we'd need to ban them completely, at large, in order that the memories of religion would die away also, THEN we can have a clean start with an atheist world... but as long as there are people around insisting on lies, subterfuge and supernatural, there will be enough followers to perpetrate these myths. Canada, for a decade or two, was on the way to secularity... but our increased immigration has turned this page and we are becoming, through our immigrants, more believing. Rational vs irrational thinking is something that must be fought for constantly, actively, militantly, because irrational thinking calls to people's lowest common denominator, fear of nothing, and the lowest common denominator is always the hardest one to fight.

I agree to a limited extent. Much of the human race is in a follow the leader mode---just look at the Republican party--follow the money and the power. BUT we have, in this generation, the power of the internet that will eventually percolate intelligent critical thinking into the masses. Like you say -- it will take a while---but you cannot prohibit religion---it would be like prohibition--just make things worse by making it even more attractive to the screwballs. We also have to take away poverty--it attracts the need for a better life in the so-called after life-- But with the caveat that many very wealthy successful people are religious fanatics.Just take a look at the far right here in the USA and elsewhere.